Problem based learning promotes engagement in meaningful learning and cooperation among students. When applying PBL in distributed groups distance has to be bridged by means of technology. Collaborative virtual environments (CVE) can help to overcome two crucial problems of PBL, if used in a distributed learning situation: Firstly, learners have problems to understand, interact with, and tailor...

Developing intelligent tutoring systems that respond effectively to trainee or student affect is a key part of education, particularly in domains where learning to regulate one’s emotion is key. Effective affect response relies upon effective affect detection. This paper discusses an upcoming cooperative study between the Army Research Laboratory, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Nort...

MOOCs, being a new education paradigm, present both opportunities and challenges to educators and learners. On one hand, their massive and open nature allow learners from all over the world to take part in learning their favorite subjects in a flexible manner. On the other hand, the lack of face-to-face engagement also introduces a sense of isolation in students, resulting in a high dropout rat...

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide an opportunity for people to access free courses offered by top universities in the world and therefore attracted great attention and engagement from college teachers and students. However, with contrast to large scale enrollment, the completion rate of these courses is really low. One of the reasons for students to quit learning process is problems w...

Web-videoconference systems offer several tools (like chat, audio, and webcam) that vary in the amount and type of information learners can share with each other and the teacher. It has been proposed that tools fostering more direct social interaction and feedback amongst learners and teachers would foster higher levels of engagement. If so, one would expect that the richer the tools used, the ...

Instructional content designers of online learning platforms are concerned about optimal video design guidelines that ensure course effectiveness, while keeping video production time and costs at reasonable levels. In order to address the concern, we use clickstream data from one Coursera course to analyze the engagement, motivational and navigational patterns of learners upon being presented w...

We investigated 28 learners’ postural patterns associated with naturally occurring episodes of boredom, flow/engagement, confusion, frustration, and delight during a tutoring session with AutoTutor, a dialoguebased intelligent tutoring system. Training and validation data were collected in a learning session with AutoTutor, after which the learners’ affective states (i.e., emotions) were rated ...

This paper discusses the philosophy behind utilizing blogs to engage Postgraduate learners at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) University of New South Wales (UNSW). Digital diaries (Gleaves, Walker & Grey, 2007) were established to enable a reflexive and collaborative space in which students could discuss and reflect on their personal experiences while completing a compulsory arts industry Inter...

Previous research has provided evidence that mental imagery and embodied action can facilitate word learning in a novel language. However, it is unclear how these factors interact— as well as why they play a role—in word learning. Through a set of four experiments, this research demonstrated that neither mental imagery nor embodied action directly promotes the acquisition of second language (L2...